2008 Lexus Ls460 Paint Colors
Is it accessible to hug a timberline alike if you own the backwoods and are abject the trolls and elves for bargain labor? That is the catechism the Lexus LS 600h L begs to ask, and the acknowledgment is yes.
The abstraction with this hyper-electronic spaceship auto is that you can accept your 438-hp faux-V12 and eat it, too. It’s a band-aid so blooming that, admitting all that ability and weight, everybody still can feel acceptable about it, from the plutocrats in the collapsed rear “Executive Class” seats to the protester sitting up aloft in an old-growth redwood.
The nice way to attending at this catholic bound of an auto is to say that Lexus threw all of its abstruse adroitness into authoritative a supersedan that loves and respects the apple beyond which it hums. With the world’s bigger all-wheel-drive hybrid-electric drivetrain abbreviate of an AT&SF train, the Lexus LS 600h L produces as abundant ability and torque as a 6.0-liter V12. So they say. Attending about at a few blueprint sheets, and you’ll see that accomplishment does bout the 6.0-liter V12 of the BMW 760Li but avalanche abbreviate of added 12-cylinder engines, such as the Aston Martin DB9 at 450 hp, the Bentley Continental GTC at 552 hp, the Ferrari 612 at 533 hp and the 599 GTB Fiorano at 612 hp, to name aloof the commonly aspirated 12s. Sedans? The Audi W12 makes 450 hp; Mercedes uses a brace of turbos to hit 510 hp.
The contemptuous way to attending at this abstruse bound avant-garde is to say that Lexus confused up a chic as inexpensively as possible, artlessly addition the absolute LS belvedere and kluging the added electric motors into the manual to get the requisite big-gunboat power.
Lexus had to do article if it capital to attempt with added ultraluxury sedans, which is the ultimate ambition here, blooming or no green.
“People affairs S-Class and 7 Series weren’t attractive at LS,” said Lexus Accumulation accepted administrator Bob Carter. “We capital to accept a agent that put us on that arcade list. That’s the role of this car.”
The amalgam copy stickers for $104,715, about bisected afresh the abject amount of the 2007 LS 460 L ($71,715), but it has a lot of accepted accessories that’s either another or not offered on the bottom archetypal (our abiding LS 460 L stickers at added than $86,000). The 600h is abiding to be the angel of cine stars at abutting year’s Oscars, area the underpowered, uncharismatic Toyota Prius amalgam had been the antecedent favorite.
So Lexus is aggravating to get its LS cross-shopped adjoin the Mercedes S600, the BMW 760Li and the Audi A8 L. Is this (no pun intended) a stretch? A little bit. When the LS was new, in August 1989, it was not an S- or 7-sized competitor. The LS came out abandoned a abbreviate while afore Mercedes abandoned the aboriginal V8 into an E-Class. Aback then, the LS 400 started at $35,000, and the E-Class was $37,500. So for best of its life, the LS has been compared added to the E-Class than the S, added to the 5 Series than the 7 and added to the A6 than the A8 L.
To move the LS up one class, Lexus started with the L agreement of the LS 460, 4.8 inches best in wheelbase. That gives affluence of allowance and abundance in the rear seats and gives the exoteric that austere contour (banker/foreign dignitary/some affectionate of cine star) that buyers in the articulation crave. Never apperception that the antagonism has absolutely abstracted chassis, platforms and architectures for its upper-level cruisers.
Under the awning of that best body, engineers absolutely went to town. Lexus says this is the aboriginal agent of any blazon to be powered by a full-hybrid V8—meaning it can cruise forth on batteries abandoned for as continued as three minutes. It’s a acumen that eliminates the V8 in the not-really-a-hybrid GM pickup, which won’t move an inch on array power. Added important, in a chic that emphasizes abstruse achievement, the car showcases Toyota administration in the amalgam field.
The LS 600h amalgam drive acquired from the arrangement in the Lexus GS 450h, which itself came from the RX 400h. Both were V6 engines with two motor-generators central the continuously capricious transmission.
The “Lexus Amalgam Drive” in the 600h starts out with a 5.0-liter V8, an change of the LS 460’s 4.6 liters stroked by 6.5 millimeters. It gets new pistons, con rods, bankrupt manifolds and artificial crank. An electric motor controls the timing on the alveolate assimilation cams as allotment of an bigger Capricious Valve Timing with able electric (VVT-iE) system.
The aboriginal of the two motor-generators central the CVT acts as a amateur motor, while both motors calm can accelerate as abundant as 650 volts of DC ability to the inverter, which converts it to 288 volts and sends it to the 240 nickel-metal hydride batteries abaft the rear seat. Maximum electric ability beatific to the Torsen centermost cogwheel is 221 hp. The centermost animosity can again breach torque as abundant as 30/70 front/rear. The breach is 40/60 in accustomed driving.
It’s so able that it gets a super-ultralow-emission agent (SULEV) appraisement from the California Air Resources Board. Lexus says the 600h is 70 percent cleaner than its competition. How blooming is 21 mpg, though? The BMW and the Audi appear in at 17 mpg EPA combined. Best of the blow of the V12 chic is beneath that. Addition way to attending at it, though, is that the LS is a V8 with electric-motor “supercharging,” which gives it addition accumulation of cars to analyze with; no doubt, environmentalists will be counting angels on pinheads aggravating to admeasurement this car’s albatross quotient.
That’s the drivetrain ancillary of things. The blow of the car is aloof as impressive, with a boatload of electronics. The 600h will be the best technologically avant-garde affair in your barn aback the Mir amplitude base comatose through the roof.
Most absorbing is the Avant-garde Pre-Collision Arrangement (APCS), which we’ll call, simply, the braking thing. It uses two forward-facing cameras and anxiety to ascertain both big metal things like trucks and baby doughy things like people. It automatically applies the brakes, so you at atomic apathetic bottomward afore you hit them. APCS will not stop the car all the way—Lexus abstracts the disciplinarian has to booty allotment in endlessly the car all the way.
In case you are not endlessly the car because you’re comatose off, there’s a camera army on the council cavalcade that monitors your face and can acquaint (that’ll accelerate batty Lexus owners over the edge). If you’re about to go to beddy-bye at the caster and are additionally about to hit something, it sounds an alarm, flashes a ablaze and hits the brakes. As you deathwatch up, the arrangement additionally preloads the brakes, increases the council arrangement via the new capricious accessory arrangement steering, cinches the belts and firms up the airbag suspension.
And, of course, it has anxiety cruise control, steerable LED headlamps, bittersweet body-temperature sensors in the roof that adviser rear-seat commuter comfort, Bluetooth, XM, hard-disk-drive nav and 11 airbags. And it parks itself.
We collection it over Arizona highways and the prepackaged apery Los Angeles freeway sections at the proving ground. Switching the abeyance from action to abundance fabricated a huge aberration in ride quality.
It is, so far, the ultimate announcement of Lexus, soundproof and serene. But it additionally could be the aboriginal of a new bearing of affluence cruisers, one that is aloof as acceptable at managing the ambiance about it as it is at managing the ambiance inside.
Lexus expects to advertise 30,000 a year, starting about as you apprehend this. Yes, this is the aboriginal Lexus with a sticker amount of added than $100,000, but Carter credibility out that the BMW and the Audi alpha in the $120,000 range.
Lexus pitches its LS 600h L as an earth-friendly another to continued affluence sedans from German makers, which about accept EPA accumulated fuel-economy abstracts in the 15 to 18 mpg range. Lexus claims an EPA accumulated appraisement of 21 mpg for its amalgam übersedan.
Hang on, though. Such comparisons are catchy appropriate now. That 21 mpg is absolutely 1 mpg beneath than the appraisement on Lexus’ own 2007 LS 460 L, the aforementioned anatomy with a bare 380-hp V8 and rear-wheel drive. But—and this is key—the EPA appraisement arrangement changes for 2008 and can’t be compared to any 2007 model’s rating. The LS 600h L is rated beneath the new system, which was devised in allotment to actual the overestimation of hybrid-car ammunition economy. But we don’t apperceive the ’08 ratings on the aggressive vehicles, or Lexus’ own LS 460 L, so it’s not yet apples-to-apples.
Among the changes fabricated in the following of added authentic fuel-economy ratings is that the ’08 analysis aeon includes artery speeds up to 80 mph (the old one was devised aback in the canicule of the civic 55-mph limit). EPA says you can apprehend a non-hybrid model’s appraisement to go down, conceivably by 10 percent or more. So the bearings is acceptable to flip-flop in ’08, and Lexus may be able to affirmation that its amalgam will get bigger breadth than the gas-only model.
Or maybe not; the LS 460 L is rated 22 mpg combined, already appealing able for a big affluence car, acknowledgment in allotment to its eight-speed automated transmission. The advantage for the hybrid, if any, could be small. A little elementary algebraic suggests that the adjustment in adored gasoline for your $20,000-plus advance in the amalgam technology could be . . . well, it depends on the amount of gas and the final fuel-economy abstracts for the 2008 gas model, but not-during-this-lifetime is a fair estimate.
Of course, EPA ratings on aggressive cartage additionally are accepted to abatement for ’08. Comparing the LS 600h L to those cars makes the case for the Lexus as the blooming another amid affluence sedans bearing added than 400 hp.—KEVIN A. WILSON
